III. Love and Heartbreak According to Artificial Intelligence
To our surprise, we realized that the “transcripts” of our spoken contributions in the various workshops either had nothing to do with what was actually said, or perversely altered the original meaning, or made it even more confusing. We were generous and thought these were just glitches in the “auto-correct” features of the various word processors. You know, that stubbornness (evident in “smart” phones) to change what you write into whatever the algorithm feels like. If you text someone “I miss you in my heart,” the corrector does its “job” and what arrives says “I have weirdos in my room.” More than a few arguments between couples stem from those “smart” phones.
So we asked them. And they replied, proudly, that they used an Artificial Intelligence program where, for just $20 a month, you send it the audio and it sends back a transcript. But the AI has hearing problems, because where “a statement like “The Anarchist Cop wants his son to be like him” was said, it was transcribed as ”an acceleration of the artist cop wants his stash to be like him.” In another case, they used YouTube subtitles. In yet another, a word processor app that “listens” and types. All with similar results.
In an article in his column in Milenio Diario (“The Melancholy of Resistance,” May 5, 2026), Jordi Soler pointed to the process of creating and shaping idiots—the dumbing down of society—as a task of Artificial Intelligence (referred to hereafter as “AI”).
Fair enough, I would add mental laziness and idleness. Why read and try to extract the essence of a text when AI can summarize it in a few lines? But not only that:
When the art of cinema welcomed and enabled the arrival of the “green screen” (or blue, I don’t recall), thereby favoring “special effects” and visual impact, it forgot that this was detrimental to the script, the direction, the performances, the locations, and the production. That is to say, Cinema as such. And so we saw the rise of superhero movies, monster movies, disaster movies, and alien invasion movies, where the actor or actress only had to make a face of terror or a “don’t worry, everything will be fine” expression. The green screen allowed the heroine (let’s not forget gender parity) to defeat the alien invasion with a hair clip. Impressive.
But behind the green screen came AI, and with it, the creation not only of characters, but also of the craft of acting… and of screenwriters, production, lighting, costumes, dubbing, post-production, and all the other elements that still make up “the seventh art.”
Behind every unquestionable fact lies a exponential defeat—that is, a defeat to the Nth power, a fall that leads to another and another and so on. Because “AI saves you work and time,” ergo… AI is simultaneously the producer, marketer, and “dealer” of the pleasant drug of mental laziness.
Behind AI’s “summaries” lies the defeat of one of the defining characteristics of the human being: thinking. And its manifestations: reading, writing, painting, singing, playing, composing, dancing, writing, debating, proposing, and so on. That is to say, creating… and resisting.
Every offer the system makes to you—promising to save you work, effort, dedication, and commitment—hides an attempt to supplant you. And, of course, there’s no financial savings. On the contrary.
AI hides the true cost: the issue isn’t that it might become independent and turn against its creator (Skynet on the near horizon), but rather that it turns humans into physically and mentally lazy beings who follow the “majority” algorithm like a new Pied Piper of Hamelin… with the precipice already on the near horizon.
Imagine that you’re about to “like” a post you enjoyed, and the AI alerts you: “Warning: your ‘like’ goes against what the majority says and will cause your follower count to drop, and therefore your popularity rating.” Terror.
In the arts, AI will be able to (or may already be able to) write a novel and achieve success because it has used the algorithm and knows that the villain’s death is more welcome than the hero’s. Or vice versa. And it can determine that a certain combination of colors, strokes, and compositions in painting, sculpture, or music will be “successful”—that is, popular, or appealing to the majority. Accordingly, AI can “copy and reproduce” the musical notes, sequences, and rhythms of, say, Mozart, and “compose” a score.
It begins by copying, then moves on to supplanting, and ends by replacing and eliminating.
An example: you are assigned, in the subject of “reading and comprehension” (I don’t know if it still exists), the literary work known as “Don Quixote,” that is, “The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha,” by the Spaniard Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (who lived during a period—1547 to 1616—of the so-called “Viceroyalty” and who, therefore, must ask the 4T for forgiveness… so that it may continue to strip indigenous peoples of their territories). Instead of looking for the book and reading it, you go online, Google either of the two phrases, and find that…
“Don Quixote de la Mancha doesn’t have a set number of pages; it varies depending on the publisher and format. However, in the most widely recognized complete editions, such as the one published by the Royal Spanish Academy (RAE), the book is around 1,424 pages long.”
“Ugh!” you say to yourself, “and how long does it take to read that?” Once again, the AI:
“Reading *The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha* will take you, on average, 27 hours of continuous reading. At around 1,000 pages, most readers spend between 2 and 3 months reading it at a leisurely, steady pace, although if you set aside 30 to 45 minutes a day, you could finish it in about 3 or 4 weeks.”
“Too long,” you think, “in that time I could post lots of comments (suggested by AI, of course), and give lots of ‘likes’ and ‘dislikes’ (also guided by AI),” so you decide it’s better to consult a summary. The AI:
“Don Quixote is the universal symbol of idealism, freedom, and the struggle for dreams. It represents the eternal confrontation between reality and fantasy. Today, the adjective ‘quixotic’ is used to describe an idealistic person who puts their noble values before their own convenience.”
I’ve done these “searches” online, and every time I type in a query, the AI adds the word “thinking,” while the spinning circle warns you not to interrupt. But if you pay close attention, the fine print reveals where the AI got that summary from: YouTube! In other words, you’ve made a decision (not to read Don Quixote because it’s too long), accepted a summary as accurate, and assumed that you’ve practically read the whole thing—all based on an algorithm that determines the source of information and its reliability based on popularity, that is, on the majority (it has a lot of “views”).
All of this is relevant because, when I look through newspapers and magazines (on social media I only see videos of puppies and kittens), I see that what started as advice and recommendations for, say, sex, has now become pronouncements: “Are you having sex the right way? The AI tells you what you’re doing right and what you’re doing wrong.”
After hearing the story about “the Castro supporters” that Subcomandante Insurgente Moisés told me, I found myself thinking about “shared women”—about how they became a source of concern for the average citizen as part of his possessions, even taking precedence over other, more logical things: his car, his house, his cell phone, his computer, and so on.
Is the heterosexual couple’s relationship a relationship of ownership, of possession? A fiefdom where the man—and in some cases, the woman—is the one who dictates life and, not infrequently, death? I am not speaking of jealousy, but of that relationship so staunchly defended even by progressivism, where there is an owner and a possession. And where the personal is transformed into a simile of social property: my means of production, my workers, my husband or my wife, my children, my God, my religion, my color, my race, my language, my way, my calendar, my geography. Mine, me, with me.
An impossible leap has been made between a reality imposed by blood and fire, and the realm of the personal and private.
The various differences—the “other loves,” as we Zapatista peoples often say—stand in opposition to an imposed “normality.” The heterosexual person believes that their “way” is and must be universal. To this end, they will call upon quantitative religion: “We are the majority, and therefore we are right. And those who are not part of the majority are to blame for that—for not being part of the majority.” And that is why violence against “loas otroas” is “normal.” This logic, which is palpable on social media and in the media, is reproduced or reflected on an individual level. The individual is forced to jump through hoops, that is, to be and appear “normal,” like the majority. To those who differ, the mainstream “love” offers a closet.
The pithy phrase that, in my view, captured the essence of the French May of ’68 is a perfect description of modern civilized societies: “Eat shit—millions of flies can’t be wrong.” “Common sense” thus became a mere imitation of “popular opinion.
“This aberration could be normalized by AI, since its data sources are those presented as the most “popular.” Even the profession of governing is now the profession of being “popular.” That is why AI recommends meeting and taking photos with BTS, U2, and BlackRock (the true “owner of the world” due to the amount of money it moves—it does not appear on the list of the wealthiest companies)—who convey youth, nostalgia, and “realism in macroeconomics”; and it recommends not meeting with the Searching Mothers, with the CNTE, with rural producers, with indigenous peoples who evade government control, with environmental activists, with opponents of megaprojects, gentrification, and demagoguery as a substitute for justice; in short, with everything that conveys incompetence, corruption, and the harsh, stubborn reality that progressivism faces daily.
So we could say that, for AI, love and heartbreak depend on the source consulted… and on majority support. You will succeed in love, or fail, according to the sentiment of the majority, supposedly consulted by AI, but in reality shaped by it. “Being popular,” that teenage longing from high school, is now the aspiration that governs modern societies and governments.
Why suffer the feeling of a knot in your stomach, caused by love or heartbreak, if you can avoid the hassle of building a relationship simply by “blocking” someone or changing your avatar… or your phone number? Yes, back in the day, you’d change the channel if you didn’t like something. Now, if you don’t like reality, just switch phones. Just make sure it has the fastest AI.
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In any case, with or without AI, the system’s goal is none other than to spread resignation. If religions can no longer achieve this, technology tries to. Just as it now fosters resignation in the face of widespread doubt, identity crises, uncertainty, and chaos imposed from above. Not to provoke disorder, but to make people long for order. Resigning oneself to catastrophe is the first step toward eventually needing it.
In the “modernity” we endure, nothing is more subversive than thinking. Well, perhaps there is something even more irreverent: organizing. And to organize, friends and enemies—just as with tango and making love… or breaking up—it takes at least two.
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Note: If I wrote something silly, it must be because the AI changed what I meant to write. So it goes.
(to be continued…)
From the mountains of southeastern Mexico.
The Captain (in the absence of the AI).
May 2026.